[Python-3000] Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

[Robert Brewer]

I took the liberty of asking DRH's advice based on his experiences with
sqlite/2/3, and he graciously replied:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: drh at hwaci.com [mailto:drh at hwaci.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 10:02 AM
> To: Robert Brewer
> Subject: Re: Python 3 needs your help
> 
> "Robert Brewer" <fumanchu at aminus.org> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > There has been some discussion [1] lately on whether to rename the
> > "python" interpreter to "python3" for Python 3.0. I immediately
> > thought of "sqlite3" of course, and wondered if you had any advice
> > for the Python developers about the benefits or hardships of your
> > naming choices for sqlite. If you had just a couple minutes to add
> > your experience to the discussion, it'd be a big help.
> 
> The primary reason from going from "sqlite" to "sqlite3" was to
> allow the same application to link against both libraries at the
> same time.  This was important during the transition period since
> some programs needed to be able to read an SQLite v2 database then
> write the content over to an SQLite v3 database as part of the
> upgrade process.  Even today, three years into version 3, there
> still exist important programs (ex: PHP) which link against both
> libraries by default.
> 
> I do not recall encountering any problems with the "sqlite3" name.
> Nobody has complained.  And we have not had any negative experiences.
> Everything has worked out well.
> 
> If you are referring to the name of the SQLite CLI program as opposed
> to the library, it is convenient to have a separate name for the
> version 3 CLI since we often need to both the older version 2 and
> new version 3 programs at the same time.  For example, to upgrade a
> legacy database:
> 
>     sqlite olddatabase .dump | sqlite3 newdatbase
> 
> There are still many sqlite version 2 databases around, and so it
> is important to be able to have both older "sqlite" and newer
"sqlite3"
> binaries in your PATH.  I can imagine that it will similarly be
> convenient to have both "python" and "python3" in your PATH at the
> same time.
> 
> I think calling it "python3" is probably a good idea.
> 
> --
> D. Richard Hipp <drh at hwaci.com>